help 🥲

Hey mama! I have no advice. I’m in the same boat 8 months later. I feel for you and you got this 🫶🏽

You can drink (not to excess) but the odd casual drink safely and feed! No tips for the bottle other than it doesn’t matter what bottle it is it’s about consistency. My baby also never took a bottle but did accept a straw cup very well. At this age it’s quite unlikely baby will take a bottle of not already established so I’d focus on a straw or open cup instead

Me and my guy had to go through about 4 different brands until he finally found one he liked- we use lansinoh brand! Good luck you got this 😊🤞

Hi! I’m no expert but have you tried the dr browns bottle? I recall waiting a while with my first to give him a bottle n I tried 3 different brands but luckily he went for dr brown,,

I’ve heard lansinoh and evenflo balance are most like the breast so breastfed babies take to those well!

^ I’ve heard that brand is good but my EBF baby only takes philips avent bottles ! also have someone else that the baby is comfortable try to offer the bottle ! just because the baby knows it’s you and would expect your boob for feeding time. my mom would help me a lot when I would have to run errands and need some alone time. yes she cried at first and didn’t want it but she was fine and eventually took it. Don’t stress too much everything will fall into place, breast feeding is a lot it’s self so you’re doing good !

Maybe pump before & then dump during your drinks

My child is 13 months old now, and I went through the exact same problem and never had any success. So no advice, but just wanted to say the time passes quickly and once they get established with solids they start going longer without milk, so you get a bit more freedom.

If she is like I was I never would take the rubber nipples eather I went from breast feed to hard plastic sippy cups

Check the nipple size on the bottles. A slow flow is vest got EBF.

You can also try “bait and switch” so you start to breastfeed and then quickly give the baby the bottle. That might get baby used to bottle

Can someone else offer a bottle? My LO would not take a bottle from me, but would accept it if dad or grandparents fed her. We tried many different bottles and the only one she accepted was tommee tipee

I used the method @Rocio described and it has worked for getting her introduced to the bottle. My baby tends to refuse botttles when she is wide awake and already fussy; however, she will accept them drowsy. So whenever my husband or mom watches my baby, they bounce her to sleep first and then give her the bottle and she drinks it right up. She also accepts the bottle in a moving car when she is strapped in her car seat. Getting her to take the bottle consciously is my next goal. She’s 4 months and solids are around the corner, so I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Have you tried having someone else introduce the bottle? Generally if she can smell you she won’t settle for a bottle because she knows she can have you

I love the evenflo balance bottles, my baby was ebf and does really well with them

I’m not in exactly the same boat because I ignored the advice and introduced pumped milk in a bottle after the first week or two. BUT we did hit a horrible snag at about 3 months where our baby stopped accepting the bottle and did exactly what yours does - gagged and cried and made a fuss every time we tried to give the bottle. A few things helped us - first of all, we realised she wouldn’t take the bottle from me (because she knew the boob was right there). She also made more of a fuss if I was in the room/she could see me. Also, my husband is *very* stubborn and would not come to me for help unless she was screaming the whole house down. If it was just a bit of gagging and crying, he’d rock her and soothe her with music and keep trying, for an hour or more if needed. Eventually she realised it was the bottle or nothing, and she started enjoying it again. One other thing, which worked for us when she got too worked up, is use the boob as “bait” and then switch to bottle.

By the way you can *definitely* enjoy a casual drink if you’re breastfeeding! You need to be close to dead with alcohol poisoning for enough alcohol to get into the breast milk to affect your baby. My health visitor sent me a study that showed that it takes being something like FIVE TIMES over the drink drive limit for the alcohol to even induce a little bit of sleepiness in the baby. I don’t know about you but I’d be dead if I drank five times the drink drive limit 🫠 I have the odd G&T or glass of wine in the bath, I find that enough for me at the moment to relax but not too much to make me dehydrated with the breastfeeding 👍

https://www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/factsheet/alcohol/ Here’s the link the HV sent me to reassure me I could have the odd drink if I wanted, hope that helps!

I had the same problem with my lo and she's now 6 months and only just starting to take to it, I have to lay her down next to me to get her to feed from a bottle otherwise she just won't stop fussing I also use to nanobebe bottles

Just curious why was nipple confusion a worry if you wanted to exclusively pump anyway? Seems like the breast would cause nipple confusion in that case (which sounds like what happened).

I went against the advice and gave my daughter a pacifier day two and a bottle during week two. I EBF and she latches fine and she didn’t have nipple confusion. I never understood why they suggest waiting so long. To me that allows the baby too much time to get used to the nipple and then they definitely won’t want the bottle. I am assuming you tried the Como Tomo bottle? My daughter likes that one best but will pretty much drink from any bottle I give her. I only pump two or three times a day and give her that milk in a bottle, otherwise I breastfeed her. All the best 🫶🏾

I gave bottles at birth then mine started refusing them at about a month old! I’m sorry to say I didn’t get her back on them despite trying every bottle and every trick I could find so I moved to sippy cups and managed to get some success with soft spouts and she did really well with a straw cup She finally accepted a bottle at 8 months (probably silly to give her at this age I know) but she’d bitten me and I needed to heal so I just BF in the morning then offered cups and bottles for the day, then BF at bedtime. The next day I did the same again and she took the bottle and she has 3-4 bottles per day now (it’s been about 3 weeks) course I’m not suggesting starve your baby and if I hadn’t been in pain I probably would have given in and offered BF because I was worried about her intake that first day but she also wasn’t upset over it at all and she’s had formula everyday since!

We had the same thing. Wouldn’t take a bottle for a few months. I tried a Tommee Tippee sippy cup which my baby liked because the milk came out without trying but sucking also gave him more. Once he sucked on that, I tried a bottle and he started to get it. Good luck x

My baby takes the evenflow balance + wide with no issues (most of the time). He was in the nicu and was introduced to a bottle first before we could try on the breast

Lanisoh bottles! I introduced at 10 weeks! She loves it!

I’m surprised they said that at the hospital!! Nipple confusion has been pretty much debunked, it all depends on the baby. I second Dr. Browns anti colic- only ones she doesn’t gag on

Hi. I just wanted to reassure you that you can have a drink and breastfeed. Here's some information about that https://llli.org/breastfeeding-info/alcohol/ With regards to giving a bottle, they are often much more receptive if you are not around at all. I.e. you leave the house and let someone else give a bottle? Also, make sure you are pace feeding the bottles. If baby is gulping and choking then it may be due to the flow being too much, they have a lot of control when breastfeeding, and it's harder for them to control the flow from a bottle. But pace feeding allows them to do just that.

Mines the same. She’s 8 months now and I’ve just accepted I won’t be able to do much for a little while longer. 🤷🏻‍♀️

So I would try the pigeon baby bottle and the nipple flow to be size SS. My daughter is also exclusively breast-fed and with that bottle and nipple. She does really well with no nipple confusion where I can easily switch back-and-forth.

What if someone else gives the bottle and you’re no where insight? You might even have to leave the house because baby can still smell your milk. Also try different positions, like facing away from you with her back against your chest, outside in the stroller, etc. Also you can still enjoy a drink and breastfeed. Unless you shitfaced drunk and can’t stand up, talk normal, etc. They also sell testing strips for alcohol levels of breast milk.

Plus doctors know very little about breastfeeding. I would ask a lactation consultant or experienced mom first.

Also make sure your pace feeding, which means the milk when the milk level needs to be parallel to the floor. In other words make sure the milk is not pointing downwards where the flow will naturally flow on its own. It’s more like the baby needs to suck on it to be able to take the milk out of the bottle.

My kid only uses the slow feed bottles cuz they are a lot like normal nipples and make you work for it. She tried drowning on the regular “natural” bottles and I felt so bad and switched her back to the slow feed. One day I will try again but it freaked me out too much to try right now

You can have alcohol while breastfeeding, it’s fine to have a casual drink like you want. And at 4 months your baby can go a few hours without milk, she will be ok. I say just keep trying with the the bottle since you have them but also try an open cup. Both my boys could be fed with an open cup at that age. You put a very small amount of liquid in the cup and give a teeny bit at a time, my babies did great with this method.

I forgot to say, my mum put me with a childminder from 4 months (different time but she was a GP and exclusively breastfed and did things the way the NHS now recommends.) She didn’t have any choice but to leave me, because she didn’t have maternity leave, but I wouldn’t take a bottle, so the childminder apparently fed me pumped breast milk using a spoon! You can get food dispensing spoons, might be worth a try if all else fails!